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Asus P2-M3A3200 HTPC Review

Testing:

In this part of testing, the Asus case will be ran through a series of temperature tests to see how high they rise during an idle state and while the computer is under full load conditions. Temperatures from the CPU, video card, hard drive and chipset will be monitored and collected. For idle state, the computer will simply be left untouched for 30 minutes making sure nothing is active, beside the Windows operating system, and then temperature readings will be taken. After, in order to simulate load state, Prime 95, HDTune and 3DMark Vantage will be run at the same time for an hour to ensure the hardware will still be fine in a worst conditions scenario. To gather the temperatures, the latest version of EVEREST will be used since it provides accurate readings of every important part. Cooling for the cases will consist of stock cooling that came with the cases, with no additional fans installed and the processor heatsink will be the stock AMD cooler. The Asus case will be compared to the Antec Sonata III to get an idea of where it stands amongst other mainstream cases on the market.

Comparison Case: Antec Sonata III

Asus' very small case did surprisingly well in these tests. It's only major loss was in hard drive temperature, probably due to the fact that in the Antec case there is much more open air space between the drive and other components. In Asus' case, the drive stands right above the southbridge and sits tight under the optical drive, nothing to help power dissipation. However, temperature levels are very acceptable so there's nothing to worry about.